GROW (BUCKY BARNES x OC)

38

He couldn't understand it. The scene had played out right in front of him, he'd seen and heard everything, but none of it seemed real. It seemed like a hellish nightmare, but nightmares ended and he could wake up from them. There was no waking up from this.

After Aurora had given herself up to her tormentor willingly to save them all, to save him, and they left, Bucky waited for the feeling of regaining control of his body again. He waited for the second he could move his muscles. There was a pain in his chest that hurt so badly he thought he'd rather a bullet wound. At least with a bullet wound, there was the obvious damage and the potential opportunity to fix it. There was no fixing his heart, not without her.

Once they had regained their control, they ran, splitting up to search for Aurora. Wanda managed to break the handcuffs off Bucky before he could dash away, so his hands were free once more. Tony had lingered back with Olivia to save Saige, but every other one of them was searching for her. She had to be close by, they couldn't have just disappeared. He didn't know why, but his instincts took him not to the elevator or stairs, but to the landing pad. When he got there, it was deserted. She was gone like she'd never even existed.

Bucky let out an enraged cry, spinning around furiously for some sign of something, anything. He saw nothing in the dark. He went back inside and began searching other routes, other alternatives. When he finally stopped searching it was day, and it was only because Steve had found him and told him that Tony had uncovered deleted footage of their departure. They had taken the landing pad. Helicopters.

Bucky walked to the landing pad and stood there in the middle for a moment. Realization came crashing down on him like a wave. He had failed. He had failed to protect her, to keep her safe, to love her the way he'd sworn he would. She was gone, and because she loved him.

Aurora knew the nightmares that would still occasionally strike him about his past as the Winter Soldier. She knew how much suffering and torture he'd been through at the hands of HYDRA and how much suffering and torture his own hands had caused under HYDRA's influence. She knew one of his deepest fears was losing control like that again, to forget who he was. But didn't Aurora know of his even greater fear? He was terrified of losing her, and now he had.

Bucky sat down on the landing pad before falling back and just laying down there, staring up at the sky. It was unfair that the Sun was lighting up the sky and there were people all around waking up to enjoy the day. It was unfair they got happiness while Aurora suffered.

He moved to lay on his side and something caught his eye. There was a light being reflected off his metal arm. He looked to see what the source of the light was and it was like his heart was broken all over again. Bucky made his way to the necklace and picked it up. The silver leaf necklace he'd bought Aurora for Christmas, before they were even together. Shortly before, but still before. She had worn it every single day since then, only removing it to shower or swim, she had even slept in it.

Holding the discarded necklace in his flesh and metal hands felt like failure. Bucky knew he wouldn't give up, he couldn't give up until he found her or died trying. Despite this, he knew he had to go back inside and find Olivia a who was surely traumatized by the night's events of loosing her mom to the man who hated her very existence.

His mind cruelly thought back to the day Aurora had received the threatening note and when she'd been convinced that leaving them all was the only way to save them. She had looked directly at Bucky and asked him to look after Olivia for him. She had trusted him with the most important aspect of her life- her daughter. Now, while Aurora was gone, Bucky would take care of Olivia just as her mom had wished.

On his way down the elevator to see the little girl, his mind drifted to his dream about moving to a new floor with their little family. Their little family which was now torn apart. Aurora was gone. Olivia was scared. Even Alpine had been injured, perhaps losing one of her seven lives. And Bucky? He was a broken man.